Why 23 million Americans don’t have fast internet

In rural America slow internet can mean more than missing shows on Netflix. Poor service limits access to health, business, and education opportunities that are readily available in urban locations with fast networks.

So far, major telecommunication companies have kept their attention on urban markets. Even when they have made the effort to tackle rural access, they have later scaled back on their commitments. Why? Customers were using too much data on their “unlimited” service plans. It’s an easy economic decision for them to make, but it doesn’t help the 39 percent of rural Americans living without high-speed internet access. In place of private companies, federal funding has been crucial in deploying rural broadband. But the level of funding has not kept pace with technology. As internet speeds get faster, the technology and infrastructure required to provide them becomes more expensive. While experts debate how to deploy broadband and what level of funding should be directed toward fostering adoption, the Federal Communications Commision seems to have an entirely different solution, and it’s not what you might expect.